After taking the overnight sleeper from Hanoi to Hue, we checked in to Sports Hotel (B, Nice enough with good breakfast, though daily power outages mean long periods without AC) for a long nap. Even though the trains we've taken in Vietnam have been comfortable and I have no trouble sleeping on them, we never really seem rested enough to start right out into the heat again.
We spent the next few days here changing into dry clothes and checking out the tombs of Nguyen dynasty emperors on a rented scooter. It seems so tame now, but this was my first time driving a motorbike and I was more than just a little apprehensive to learn it in Vietnam. With the rules of traffic here being flexible and the fact that I had Kiima riding behind me, I was shaking the first time I went around the block. Several few hours of driving that day broke me in though, and we plan to take bikes out as much as possible now.
We've decided to do this as a strategy change since Hue is the place where I finally realized that we've been coming at things from the wrong angle. I'm continually surprised and disappointed at how much each city we visit feels like a pavilion at EPCOT. Yes, I realize that we're staying on a well established path and not "discovering" anything, but I am still overwhelmed by how difficult it is to get away from the tourist infrastructure that seems to have overtaken everything. I haven't felt this way about any other country we've visited in the past 8 months. Yes, certain places have felt the same way, most notably Louang Prabang, but the entire east coast of this nation seems to have come out of a brochure in some Kao San road hostel. Now, I'm certainly a friend of the comfort, but the problem is, not only does this show us less of Vietnam, but its also more expensive, less fun, and it only increases the distance between locals and travelers. Now, I want to come back and avenge our travel-wrongs by motorcycling it the whole way. I think that's the only way we can be truly independent. Here, Kiima wants to interject that we actually did have fun (Agreed) and that I'm jaded if I don't find this to be exciting or new. Maybe a fair point. Riding that bike around WAS awesome and from the Irish guy and his Vietnamese girlfriend on the train to the Germans and Danes we've partied with the past few days, we've had good times with ridiculous frequency.
The other good news is that despite the warnings from other travelers that people in the south would be hostile to Americans, we're meeting more and more people down here that are actually nice to us than we did in the north.
We spent the next few days here changing into dry clothes and checking out the tombs of Nguyen dynasty emperors on a rented scooter. It seems so tame now, but this was my first time driving a motorbike and I was more than just a little apprehensive to learn it in Vietnam. With the rules of traffic here being flexible and the fact that I had Kiima riding behind me, I was shaking the first time I went around the block. Several few hours of driving that day broke me in though, and we plan to take bikes out as much as possible now.
We've decided to do this as a strategy change since Hue is the place where I finally realized that we've been coming at things from the wrong angle. I'm continually surprised and disappointed at how much each city we visit feels like a pavilion at EPCOT. Yes, I realize that we're staying on a well established path and not "discovering" anything, but I am still overwhelmed by how difficult it is to get away from the tourist infrastructure that seems to have overtaken everything. I haven't felt this way about any other country we've visited in the past 8 months. Yes, certain places have felt the same way, most notably Louang Prabang, but the entire east coast of this nation seems to have come out of a brochure in some Kao San road hostel. Now, I'm certainly a friend of the comfort, but the problem is, not only does this show us less of Vietnam, but its also more expensive, less fun, and it only increases the distance between locals and travelers. Now, I want to come back and avenge our travel-wrongs by motorcycling it the whole way. I think that's the only way we can be truly independent. Here, Kiima wants to interject that we actually did have fun (Agreed) and that I'm jaded if I don't find this to be exciting or new. Maybe a fair point. Riding that bike around WAS awesome and from the Irish guy and his Vietnamese girlfriend on the train to the Germans and Danes we've partied with the past few days, we've had good times with ridiculous frequency.
The other good news is that despite the warnings from other travelers that people in the south would be hostile to Americans, we're meeting more and more people down here that are actually nice to us than we did in the north.
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